Ok, I wasn't not trying to insult fruit or anything, and I was referring to research about sugar, which some other commenters are debating. Just saying that it's not even clear cut that eating fruits is particularly healthful.
And regarding "Getting all your vitamins from meat is ridiculously inefficient" -- you are trying to hack the unhackable, speaking in scientific terms about things we have little clear scientific understanding of. "Fruits and vegetables cut out the middle man; they use much less water and land to get the same nutrients into your body." -- Nope; you don't know that. Some people believe that, some don't.
For all we know, such careful nutritional hacking has little, if any, effect on our health. That's what we know. What people believe is a whole other matter. Most of the diet-talk we hear is just catechism of a new religion (and there's nothing inherently wrong with that, except that pseudoscience is a little annoying) and a whole lotta politics (in this case, it's fascinating to see liberals defending pseudoscience, while conservatives discard it, maybe because they believe the liberals who believe it's actual science). Science it ain't.
As I understand it, fructose in fruit tends to be offset by the fact that fruits have fibre. The fibre means the fructose is kept in your gut for longer, and bacteria there break it down before it has a chance to hit your liver. The issue with fructose/sucrose tends to arise when we have it in liquid format (juices, soft drinks etc.), or eat large quantities of foods high in sugar without the accompanying fibre.
And regarding "Getting all your vitamins from meat is ridiculously inefficient" -- you are trying to hack the unhackable, speaking in scientific terms about things we have little clear scientific understanding of. "Fruits and vegetables cut out the middle man; they use much less water and land to get the same nutrients into your body." -- Nope; you don't know that. Some people believe that, some don't.
For all we know, such careful nutritional hacking has little, if any, effect on our health. That's what we know. What people believe is a whole other matter. Most of the diet-talk we hear is just catechism of a new religion (and there's nothing inherently wrong with that, except that pseudoscience is a little annoying) and a whole lotta politics (in this case, it's fascinating to see liberals defending pseudoscience, while conservatives discard it, maybe because they believe the liberals who believe it's actual science). Science it ain't.